The Prophets of Eternal Fjord (54 page)

The captain says he has sailed far and wide during two decades, but never has he seen as many whales as this year. It seems they are sailing in the far north, somewhere between Greenland and America. The ship is quickly fully laden with blubber, ambergris and oil, and it will soon be time to head home to Aberdeen, he says, and there you may all expect a handsome bonus – you as well, Joe and Harpoon. Assuming you want to see Aberdeen? It would certainly like to see you, at any rate. He laughs.

You could earn some decent money if put on display in the square.

A storm chases them towards land, where they find shelter from the wind and cast anchor. When they again proceed north, Harpoon spies a number of peat dwellings. Some kayak men follow them, though the captain does not pause to wait. Harpoon stares at the land; he realizes he has been here once, but cannot recall what place it was. It has vanished from the book. He is relieved when the fells sink into the horizon and the only thing to see is the ocean.

Do you know this land, Harpoon? the captain asks.

He shakes his head. The captain studies him with piercing eyes. All right. If that's what you say.

The crew is some one score strong, bearded and red-haired, from the tender-aged ship's boy to the elderly boatswain. They numbered thirty-one on setting sail from Aberdeen a year ago, but several succumbed to the scurvy and fever, and two fell into the sea from the mast. Others have preceded Harpoon; natives picked up along the coast. He has no knowl­edge of what happened to them. Most likely they drowned or simply turned tail.

The food is plenty and not entirely inedible. Behind them they tow the carcasses of the whales they have butchered, hundreds of lispund of fresh meat, while the inhabitants on the coast die of hunger. Yet some of the meat they keep for themselves; they boil it with onions and cabbage and potatoes, a vegetable Harpoon has never before tasted. Each man receives as much ale as he can drink, moreover a quarter pint of whisky a day, a half pint on days of whale work. Joe receives none. The crew say it doesn't agree with him.

They sail north, pursued by the sun that climbs higher in the sky with each day. Coast comes into view on both sides, the fells are low and uniform, foreign. The men stand about on the deck and stare in at the land; they speak with concern about the captain having got it into his head to find a passage between the continents, the way to China, or perhaps he wishes to reach the North Pole and become celebrated. Or else die. It seems he doesn't find excitement enough in whaling, now he wants to be an explorer and see his name entered in the history books. One of the men says it is because he is loath to return home to his wife in Aberdeen, a raving fury she is, and the other men laugh and spit over the bulwark. And what about you, Harpoon, they say, grinning, have you run away from your woman, too? We all have something we've run away from. Remember that!

Early spring. The earth curtsies to the sun and the horizon is aflare. But
Henrietta of Aberdeen
flees from the sun; she follows the darkness northwards, creaking and aged, and with a crew growing increasingly nervous as to what the captain has in mind. The little Scot has a nose as red as a lantern and a small red beard that points into the air, ever to the north, as does the bowsprit. When he comes on deck the men are subservient and call him
Cap'n
. But when he is out of sight and earshot they curse him and mutter that someone ought to seize his command before they meet an unhappy end. But no one does anything about it and the captain's beard continues to point north. He calls for Harpoon and takes him down into his cabin, where sea charts are spread out over the table. With his clay pipe aglow he points to a place on the chart where the degrees of longitude run as close together as the rigging of a dog sled. He scrutinizes Harpoon questioningly. Speak up, my lad!

Harpoon says, The crew are mutinous, sir.

Who? says the captain. Tell me.

The boatswain, says Harpoon.

The boatswain is lashed to the mast and given a taste of the cat, not enough to hurt him, but more than sufficient to humiliate him. There is peace on board.

They say there's a great maelstrom up there where the land comes to an end, says the captain, and that it sucks all vessels down into the depths. Do you know of it, Harpoon?

I have never heard of such a maelstrom, says Harpoon, and I do not believe it is true.

There's a good lad, says the captain and laughs. I'm glad there's a tongue in your head. You can be of good use to me.

They drop anchor in a bay and row ashore to fetch fresh water, their supply having become greasy and fetid after months at sea. Harpoon goes first, Joe following behind, then the captain and some of the men. The land is as good as snow-free. They come to a small lake that is half covered by winter ice. They fall to their knees and drink.

How odd, they say, that something that does not taste of anything at all can taste so good!

They take off their clothes and jump into the water, dive and thrash, toss lumps of ice at each other and roar. Harpoon and Joe remain on the shore. They sit on the slope and watch the fat, pink men as they dance about, flapping their arms to keep warm, then roll in the heather to dry.

Right, says the captain, we must find another lake. This one is no good any more, now we've polluted it the water's as dirty as what we had to begin with.

Harpoon and Joe explore the area. They come to a slope teeming with hares and Joe comes to life. He kills a dozen by throwing rocks at them. Harpoon hears them fly through the air and the sound of small, shat­tering skulls. They tie the hind legs of the animals together with twine made of willow and carry them down to the shore, where the men are overjoyed at the prospect of a meal other than whale meat and rancid pork. Beyond a tall ridge they come upon a tarn. Fresh barrels are rolled forward and filled; the old reeking ones are taken apart to be stored. Joe puts his hand on Harpoon's shoulder and points. Halfway up a slope he has noticed some low mounds of peat and stone, and tufts of luscious grass. Dwelling sites. People. They return to the boat.

Well, Mutie, say the men as they ferry the barrels of fresh water back to the ship. Did you and Joe meet your families?

A couple of weeks pass. There are no whales in sight. Joe and Harpoon are put to work tarring the ship. With the rope around his midriff, Harpoon hangs suspended at the side with tar bucket and brush. Joe holds on to the other end. He sees his grinning face up above the bulwark, the limp sails, the tall masts stabbing at the sky above his head.

All right? says Joe.

All right, says Harpoon. Hold tight.

Aye, says Joe.

The tar is burning hot. Harpoon boils it in the galley and is careful not to splash it on his skin. The bucket must not get into the water or the tar will become cold and stiff and lose its ability to penetrate into the planks. One day he stumbles and a dollop of tar spills over the side of the bucket on to Joe's foot. The big man tears off his boot and jigs across the deck, and the men laugh and say what a pretty dance, a man could fall in love. Harpoon gives him his quarter pint of whisky and Joe dances on and howls an unabated monotone lament, until he falls down from exhaus­tion. Some of the men haul him up to the crow's nest, where he remains to sleep it off. Harpoon climbs up in the night to wake him and helps him down, before he falls out and knocks himself senseless.

One day one of the men shouts and points. They all run to the bulwark and stare. A squadron of kayak men appear between the ice floes. They drift to a halt some boat's lengths from the ship's side and look up to the deck, expectantly. The captain beckons them on board; he orders a ladder to be cast out. The natives climb on to
Henrietta
's deck. Harpoon stays in the background; he sits on a coil of rope with Joe and smokes his pipe as he considers the savages. They are dark in complexion, their faces and bare arms tattooed, rather tall in height, skin garments festooned with amulets, long hair held in place by pearl-studded straps going under their chins and behind their ears, the same way as some of the natives back home. Harpoon can see that they are not as calm and relaxed as they try to make out. They are alert to danger. He knows they are ready to jump over the side at the slightest sign of hostility. But the captain is composure itself, smiling and kind. It is obvious he is used to the situation, or else he simply possesses a good instinct for dealing with natives.

Harpoon! he calls. Where are you when you're needed? Come here and interpret for me.

He slides down from the coil and approaches.

Ask them if they've anything to sell, says the captain.

He speaks with the men, finding their tongue to be quite understand­able, although their dialect is foreign to him. One of them turns around and whistles sharply with two fingers in his mouth. Shortly afterwards a kone boat appears, rowed by six women. The craft is filled to the rim with narwhal tusks and fox skins. More kayaks approach, some with a female passenger on the deck, her back to the kayak man. The ship's deck is teeming with natives. Now it is the turn of the Europeans to look uneasy. But the captain remains a rock of kindness and composure.

Ask them, he says, if they have traded with ships before.

The natives say ships come every summer.

The captain looks disappointed. Ask them about the sea to the north. How far can one sail?

Far, they answer. Several weeks by kayak. But the ice forms early.

Hm, the captain muses. Ask if one of them will be my pilot.

One of the men agrees to sail north with them. But he wants his wife to go with him. The captain grants his permission.

The savages are very interested in Harpoon. Where does he come from? Where did he learn their language? He tells them he comes from the south, that the land extends further south than can be journeyed in a whole year. He tries to explain to them about the colonies, the houses, the people. They listen and are absorbed.

They say a white man, a king, owns the land. Have you seen this king?

He says there are some people who think the land is theirs, but it is not. They have trading stations, but the land belongs to us.

And you, they say, staring into his face, are you one of us? You sound like us, but look more like one of them.

I am one of you, he says. We are one people. You are my brothers.

To everyone's relief the captain changes his mind and gives orders to bear away and follow the western coast south. The information given by the savages has seemingly cured him of his yearning for the North Pole. Harpoon notes that Joe becomes more restless the further south they sail.

Joe, he says, take it easy. By this time he finds it natural to speak English. Many months have passed since he last spoke a word in Danish.

Week after week they sail with the rocky coast to starboard, towards the sun that moves in a flat curve over the horizon. He sees that Joe keeps a sharp eye on the land. The men say it was near here that Joe joined them. They pull his leg and nudge him with their elbows and say, Hey, Joe, aren't you going ashore to say hello to your mam and dad?

They cast anchor; the rowing boat is lowered. Joe will not go ashore. He hides below deck and pretends to be ill. Harpoon leaves him alone and spends some days on land under the open sky. He wanders across expanses of heather and along the fringe of a forest. So this is a tree, he says to himself and leans back his head. This is what Jonah sat beneath when he was angry with the Lord. The plains rise slowly, gentle hills outlined against a great blue sky. Then at once he is standing on the brink of a vertical drop of several hundred fathoms. Beneath him and in front of him is the sea, pressing against the coast. The difference between the tides is huge, at least ten fathoms. This must be the reason there are no traces of settlements along the coast. The natives here – among them Joe – are inlanders.

He returns to the others. They have made camp by a sizeable river in which they catch salmon that they boil and devour. But the stomach soon tires of such rich fish and after a couple of days they begin to split and salt the salmon and put them in barrels, which they sail out to the ship. Presently, Joe joins them. He sits down in the heather with Harpoon and stares bleakly at the land.

We all have something we're running away from, says Harpoon.

Joe says nothing.

When the first natives appear he hides again. Harpoon can see they are his people: tall, bony men with a loping gait and a tendency to scowl. The captain has been here before and is able to converse with them. They want rifles, he says, but these are poor people, scavengers and ne'er-do­wells with no means of payment. I think it best we make ourselves scarce before we wake up one fine morning with our throats cut and silly grins all over our good Christian faces.

They begin to pack, so as to leave the next day. In the night they keep watch by turn. But none of them sleeps. They lie and listen to the tide and believe they hear the sound of zipping arrows and cries from the forest behind them disguised as bird calls. Nothing happens. But when they go down to the shore in the morning the boat is gone.

The captain orders five of his men into the forest, armed with loaded rifles. Joe goes with them. Harpoon remains behind in the camp, along with the rest of the crew. The day passes without incident. The men return, toss down their rifles and fall exhausted in the heather.

Where's Joe? asks Harpoon.

Your friend Joe has decided to join his own people again, says the captain with a mournful smile. He sends his greeting.

The next morning the boat is returned to the shore and they sail back to the ship. The captain pats Harpoon on the shoulder. We've all got something we're running from, he says. But sooner or later we have to go back. That's how it is.

Harpoon!

He stumbles out on to the deck. The boatswain stands with the line. He smiles basely, as though he were about to hang him from the mast.